Saturday 19 September 2015

Back in New Zealand

So on the 29th May I headed back to New Zealand, after having to have one part of my flights changed due to early morning fog, I ended up leaving later in the day, with going from Townsville to Brisbane then Brisbane to Auckland followed by the next morning of the 30th instead of going straight to Dunedin on the 29th.

The flight had felt so much longer, but at least because of the cancelled flight once I got into Auckland I got free Accommodation to stay overnight in Auckland until the next flight in the morning, stayed in a pretty neat hotel called Sudima Hotel, also got a free breakfast as well.

The flight home was quite a bit bumpy.

it was coming home and seeing everyone and catching up with everyone.

On a few weeks in August I went to Pegasus Bay which is just out of Christchurch I was there to look after a couple of children, it was quite interesting and different, this time it was doing school hours  the girls Fernanda 4 and Gisele 7, it had it's challenges sometimes especially with the not listening and arguing, but it was good, I also for a couple of days got to look after a little 5 month old, that was pretty cool :).

since I have been back home in Dunedin I haven't done all that much, I have signed up for a couple of courses for the next year, so now it is just a waiting game to see if I get in,  had a couple of big birthdays, 50th and my Grandad's 80th, which we had a party for today in Blenheim, with a lot of family and some of Grandad's friends .

Tuesday 11 August 2015

Update Part 3

Thought I would spread the information out just a bit more :)

so what's next will I caught up with Nathalie several other times, we went shopping in the Stockland mall, and on another day we check out the North Queensland Army Museum, which I just loved,..\

On 25th April I got up early and caught a taxi to ANZAC park on The Strand to attend the Townsville Dawn Service, and also the 100 year marking of the landing a Gallipoli in 1915, it was a great service, got to sing both the New Zealand (in Maori too) and Australian National Anthems, although where I was standing I'm certain I was the only one singing New Zealand's one :) :D

Afterwards I went back to the house and tried to see if I would have a sleep at all, never happened, I ecded up watching the dawn service at Gallipoli live stream, and just relaxed.
Later I got ready to go to the awesome as concert of Ricky Martin which I enjoyed so much, took me for ever to get to sleep when I got home, I was just buzzing with energy.

On the 26th I meet up with Nathalie and we went down to the rock pool, and then on the 30th I caught up with her again and this time I went to magnetic island for the day, first we went around to Picnic Bay and looked at the little museum there, following by heading around to Geoffrey Bay where we had some very yummy, real Italian made pizza, it was really really good.  After lunch we went and walked around Alma Bay for a bit, and then walked back to the ferry terminal for me to head back home.

On the 17th May I caught up with Henna again and we meet up with another Au Pair Océane, we met up at a café and sat around an chatted for a while and then we ended up going to see the Army Museum and the Aquarium, it was a pretty fun full on day.

On 22nd May I had to get up nice and early to catch one of the first ferries to Magnetic Island, as I was going to Horseshoe Bay to meet up with Nathalie and go horse riding, the ride was so much fun, got to ride  lovely horse called Jack, got to have a go at doing some trotting, and we rode along the beach and then got to go swimming with the horses which was a fun and new adventure.
After horse riding we went to alma bay for our favourite pizza, and a swim, then we played uno for a bit on the beach and had slushies, the day was a lovely day, and before we headed to our homes we went and saw some Rock Wallabies which are just so adorable.
Once I got home my leg and thigh muscles were pretty sore,
 and then  on the sunday of that weekend we went too the Flinders St market in the centre of Townsville.

on the following day, Esmee, Jonathan and I went to look around the billabong sanctuary . that was  pretty awesome.

Monday 10 August 2015

Update Part 2

So following on from my update which was ages ago, but don't worry slowly catching up with everything, except maybe writing letters to friends overseas, but I will get there. :)

So after my trip Magnetic Island, got quite busy with doing many other things, especially with looking after Jonathan and too with the fact of having the house more moved in slowly more and more boxes started to disappear, so we could move around the house just fine, also had to get the exterminator in twice.

fridge had also broke so until we got a new one, we had to use a small bar fridge, that was quite a lot of fun, the old fridge had broke and even when it got repaired twice, it had just died, poor fridge couldn't take the move from Darwin to Townsville very well.

 Several times, I have hung out with my friend Sara and her tribe a few times at her house, which has been pretty fun, also meeting her 3 kids, Luke, River-Lee and Syler, although on the 7th April she gave birth to her 4th child another boy called Jessie, I got to have cuddles with him a few days later, he is a very cute wee baby :).

although the day after I ended up coming down with a cold, that hung around for a week, so I was sad I couldn't get to visit again before Sara moved down to Ayr. 

the week of having a cold was quite fun, it was during the school holidays, I would have to  say at least it is a good thing that there wasn't school children in the family that I would have to look after because having a cold where the weather is also hot, and looking after children is not fun.

So me and Jonathan who I got the cold from hung out together, both feeling miserable but we did many different activities including watching the lovely Wiggles, painting outside, drawing and reading,
Because you know reading is very fun :).

On the 21st March I attended a Australian Defence Force Parade, which was to celebrate the end of operation slipper, which ended in 2014 and had started in 2001, it was a very interesting parade  and service as well, it was a hot day too, but the funny thing is that  I was the only one not to get sun burnt :).


Can't remember the date that I went to the museum with Nathalie the North Queensland Tropical Museum it was really very quite an interesting museum we also got to see how a cannon on an old ship used to be loaded and fired, afterward we went and had lunch at the longboard restaurant, it is very nice there.

I must say it is so great when you can find a friend from anywhere in the world that has the same interests as you, that is also an Au Pair, and you just get along so well with each other, it's great :) .
church
so there is going to be different dates floating around in this post.

I made another Au Pair friend called Henna from Finland, we meet up on The Strand and chatted and first went and got some ice cream from Juliette's I had a new flavour this time of watermelon which was just tasty as, I really liked that it was quite tasty, then we walked along and up to kissing point fort, which was used up until the end of WWII it was quite interesting to look around and also looked around Jezzine Barracks.

I also meet with another Au Pair and we had coffee in the mall at Willows for a couple of hours her name was Gillian from Scotland.

Easter weekend was quite eventful, on the morning of Easter Sunday Gilligan and I got to have a easter egg hunt around the garden that was pretty awesome, afterwards I went along for a  church service, and then afterwards, I helped set up another egg hunt, for more children that were to be coming over the afternoon as well as other people too, so it became quite a busy tiresome day.

I also went to the movies  a couple of times first time was with Gilligan and we went to see Fast and Furious 7 this was an amazing movie, every single part of the movie was just great including the ending.

and the second time was with Nathalie and we went and saw Pitch Perfect 2.





Friday 12 June 2015

Update Part 1

Gosh it has been ages since my last post in February although not  counting the post on Ricky Martin concert, it is now coming up to the middle of June.

So a lot has been happening since February, one I am now back in New Zealand after doing 10mths in Australia, and I am still so proud of myself that I managed to make it till then, even though I would have loved to have continued.

So after going to the aquarium with my new friend Nathalie, which I must say that aquarium is actually pretty awesome, we even both got a membership card while we were there, so we could go  as many times as we wanted and for free as well just with using the card, and also if we brought other people along with us then they got a discount.
Also went on a couple of shopping spree's for myself and also ended up  buying myself a new laptop which is just great, as much as the tablet is good to use, it is sometimes quite difficult to do other things on it as well, so now the tablet is mainly used  now for just taking photos as sometimes I have noticed that it can take much better photos than my own camera.

Perhaps after about a week later I decided to head into the city and look around at all the old historical buildings, as I took a couple of  Heritage walks within the city, that was quite a lot of fun, but then I am crazy enough to enjoy strolling around a city and checking out all of the old buildings.

On the 8th March I went on a trip over to Magnetic Island which is about a 20min ferry ride from Townsville I meet Nathalie there as that is where she is living, we walked around Nelly Bay for a little bit while we were waiting for the  bus, to take us around to picnic bay, ended up having the bus ride for free which was actually pretty cool.
Picnic Bay is pretty fantastic, first off we went for a small walk, would have made it all the way up to the lookout but since the day was becoming quite hot, we just stopped half way, and then we headed down to the beach for  a lovely swim in the sea, of course we had to swim within the stinger net, afterwards we decided to  have some lunch at one of the restaurants there, I had some gravy and chips which was pretty good, after lunch we ended up going for another swim, at the end of the day I got just a little bit sunburnt, oh well that became a good excuse for staying indoors for most of the week.


Look out for my next update coming soon ......

Tuesday 28 April 2015

My second ever concert

So I will do another update later about what I have been up too since my last post :).

But I would now like to talk about the pretty awesome concert that I attended on Anzac Day, 25th April :) .

So I attended Ricky Martin's One World Tour Concert which he first began in New Zealand with four concerts there.
In Townsville he started he Australia leg of the tour which was great, earlier in the month there was a venue change, likely though ticketet sent out another ticket since I had already booked one earlier in the year,

So instead of the stadium where is was supposed to be originally it was then moved to the Townsville Convention and Entertainment centre and was changed to two nights instead of one so it was on 24th and 25th of April.  And to top it all off there was the fact that Ricky was bringing a special guest with him on his Australian leg, that being of Delta Goodrem,  who I also enjoy listening too, I have actually never ever seen her live before so that became another reason as to why I couldn't wait for the concert to start,

So once it hit the first of April of course I was starting a countdown :), and getting closer and closer to the date, I was listening to almost every song of Ricky Martin.


25th ..... At 7pm I arrived at the centre I was so full of excitement that it felt like  I had butterflies in my stomach,
once I went to the area that I had to be in to be able to find my seat, my seat was the second row from the top, so I was quite high up, but I found the seat to just be perfect I had a good view of the stage and could see it all clearly so  I was happy, I think personally I just didn't care where I sat, I just wanted to be there. :)

and then at 7.30pm Delta Goodrem came on, and she was just soooooooooooooooooooo amazing, even more amazing live then when you listen to her music on CD or the radio, she gave a great half n hour performance to get the crowd pumping and all hyped up, she sang many of her great songs as well as her new single 'Only Human" .

then at 8.30pm after a bit of a break Ricky finally came on and the whole 2 hours or maybe longer was just awesome and epic as, it was  so full of energy, the stage effects for each of the different songs, the dancers and band were brilliant, he sang a mixture of old classic songs as well as some of his many new ones as well, he also did a few duets with Delta, as well as Jackson Thomas who was about of Team Ricky on The Voice Australia, they were also pretty amazing.

I loved every single moment of the concert from start to finish, if I could I would go see him in concert again :).